The #1 Problem with Bulk AKA Cheap Web Hosting

Experiences With Web Hosting For My Clients

Being that I am involved behind the scenes with other people’s websites (through my concierge web hosting as well as personal projects), I deal with a lot of different web hosts. And help people fix or move away from cheap web hosting services.

This gives me a decent view of things as far as hosting goes.

Yes, I have my own opinions, which are largely based on my experiences and those of my clients. Please keep this in mind when reading the content below.

As with all things on the internet, everybody has opinions. And, everybody has different experiences. All I can do is share my experiences. 

Regrettably, the majority of suggestions found on websites and online sources are influenced by affiliate commissions rather than genuine merit. This explains the prevalence of bloggers endorsing Bluehost, as it is known for offering generous payouts. Speaking of Bluehost…

Cheap Web Hosting

Bluehost

Bluehost, a web hosting provider, offers bulk, commodity hosting services. Certain clients hosted with Bluehost encounter problems with uptime. A specific client experienced recurring instances where his website would periodically go offline. Although the majority of the time the site operated without issues, it frequently suffered from outages. Despite these interruptions, the client became accustomed to them as he knew they were temporary and unrelated to any issues with his own site.

This site didn’t even get that much traffic. So, this was not a site load issue. This issue was it was on a shared server with a bunch of other people. The infrastructure he was hosted on was just being bombarded under the load of a ton of other websites. There’s nothing he can do about it – except for leaving to a different host. So this cheap web hosting company is probably not worth it.

GoDaddy

Terrible… yes this is my opinion. One of my clients on GoDaddy was unable to even build a website without having to pay more just to access WordPress.  The website builder they provide with their hosting is terrible to the point of being unusable.  This client had the expectation of cheap web hosting, being well… cheap, but thought he would at least be able to use it.  Unfortunately, he had to pay up-charges beyond just the hosting in order to access WordPress. GoDaddy, was not nearly as “cheap” as he thought it was going to be. When I moved him over to Cloudways, all the problems went away and he had WordPress at no additional cost.

A2 Hosting

A2 Hosting frequently performs internal website migrations, presumably to optimize their services. However, this practice often results in prolonged downtime, sometimes lasting an entire day. This is unacceptable and can cause significant issues for users.

SiteGround

I discovered one of the best cheap web hosting companies, although it isn’t flawless. I utilized their services for my early personal WordPress sites, and while it’s been years since then, my clients have used them. SiteGround is known for being one of the faster hosting providers, but I’ve noticed that many of their sites still load quite slowly. They often try to upsell additional resources to ensure your site runs smoothly. However, if you don’t purchase the extra resources, they may temporarily suspend your site until you’re within your allocated limits again.

Now, this isn’t just about me naming different companies.

I’d like to offer a few general observations here…

While it may be tempting to go for bulk or cheap web hosting plans, there are some serious problems and hidden costs associated with these types of providers that you should know about before making your decision.

• The first issue with bulk providers is that they often overcrowd their servers with too many websites. This can lead to slow loading times and poor website performance, which can cause a host of problems for your visitors, including high bounce rates and lost sales. Additionally, if your website is slow to load, it will likely be penalized by search engines, resulting in a lower search engine ranking. Check your website’s speed here: Page Speed Insights or for large sites with many pages use E​​xperte.
• Another problem is that they often provide limited customer support. If you run into a problem with your website, you may have to wait hours or even days to get a response from their support team, if they even have one. Furthermore, their support team may not be well-trained, resulting in poor-quality assistance. This can be especially problematic if you’re not technically savvy and need help troubleshooting an issue.
• Additionally, many bulk or cheap web hosting providers use shared IP addresses, which means that your website shares an IP address with other websites. This can lead to security issues as if another website on the same IP address gets hacked, your website may be compromised as well. Furthermore, a shared IP address can lead to email deliverability issues if another website on the same IP address is sending spam, your email may be marked as spam as well.

• Lastly, many bulk or cheap web hosting providers offer cheap web hosting deals upfront but then charge extra fees for features like backups, SSL certificates, and domain privacy. These costs can add up quickly and end up costing you more in the long run than a more expensive hosting option that includes these features as standard. A lot of people end up feeling like the REAL price is too expensive.  Site Ground and most of the other bulk hosts will hook you with some cheap intro rate, but the real price is much higher.

What Hosting should you use?

I use Cloudways for my own hosting and recommend Cloudways for all of my clients and anyone else.

Cloudways is not a recommended choice for commission. While I do earn an affiliate commission when individuals sign up through my link, I would likely earn a substantially higher amount by suggesting a consumer, mass hosting provider like Bluehost. However, these companies excel more in marketing than in hosting. They rely on customers getting trapped and are hesitant to switch their hosting, whether it be due to fear or the inconvenience of migrating a website.

With Cloudways you just pay monthly for the kind of hosting you want. No cheap pre-paid periods only to get you sucked into something much more expensive later.

With Cloudways, you’re on a virtual private server (or VPS) 🖧. This means you get far more storage and more resources than most shared hosting. You’re not sharing those resources with others.

And being a VPS, you are not locked into anything or any proprietary site builder. They don’t ban certain plugins. They don’t inject a bunch of junk into your WordPress admin panel. It is just good, clean hosting.

Cloudways has a really nice user-friendly interface to manage your site. It makes the otherwise tedious experience of managing a VPS into a very user-friendly thing. You won’t find any cPanel junk here.

The big difference is that Cloudways is not an “all-in-one” host where you can buy domains through them, host your email, etc. They have add-ons if you want them, but they just do hosting. Which is why they’re good at it.

So, that’s my overview and opinions of web hosting these days, from the perspective of a person who builds and manages websites across a lot of different companies.

Summary

In summary, while bulk or cheap web hosting may seem like a great deal initially, it’s important to consider the potential problems and hidden costs associated with these types of providers before making your decision. It’s best to invest in a web hosting provider that offers good performance, excellent customer support, and a range of features that will help you grow your website and business. So is the cheap hosting plan really worth it?